Does Terrorism Work?

Eric Gould and Esteban Klor

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2010, vol. 125, issue 4, 1459-1510

Abstract: This paper examines whether terrorism is an effective tool for achieving political goals. By exploiting geographic variation in terror attacks in Israel from 1988 to 2006, we show that local terror attacks cause Israelis to be more willing to grant territorial concessions to the Palestinians. These effects are stronger for demographic groups that are traditionally right-wing in their political views. However, terror attacks beyond a certain threshold cause Israelis to adopt a less accommodating position. In addition, terror induces Israelis to vote increasingly for right-wing parties, as the right-wing parties move to the left in response to terror. Hence, terrorism appears to be an effective strategy in terms of shifting the entire political landscape to the left, although we do not assess whether it is more effective than non-violent means.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (85)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1459 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Does Terrorism Work? (2009)
Working Paper: Does Terrorism Work? (2009)
Working Paper: Does Terrorism Work? (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:125:y:2010:i:4:p:1459-1510.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().